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Elisabeth Tshala Muana Muidikay was born on March 13, 1958, in É������������ٳ󱹾�������, in what was then the Belgian Congo; the city is now Lubumbashi, the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Better beaten than eaten,” the bloodied U.N. official quipped to a group of reporters in 1961, just moments after surviving a beating by Congolese secessionists in Elisabethville.

“I prefer a-akento akwa Elisabethville.”

“And what is so special about women from Elisabethville?”

They swat it away and step into the Belgian’s meticulously polished office in Elisabethville.